A Blacksburg biotech firm has won a $1.9 million contract to help fight bacteria that is resistant to multiple drugs and is infecting a growing number of hospital patients.

Techulon Inc. received the award from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, the company announced this week.

The funding will allow Techulon to continue its work toward developing a drug to combat multi-drug-resistant bacteria.

Known as “superbugs,” the bacteria are showing up in patients at hospitals and nursing homes, causing 100,000 deaths a year and more than $30 billion in medical costs, the company said.

“It is a problem that’s creeping more and more into hospital emergency rooms across the country,” said Josh Bryson, chief scientific officer at Techulon.

Over the next two years, scientists at Techulon will work to develop a drug they hope to eventually use in human clinical trials.

Although the goal is to put the technology to use at veterans’ hospitals, Bryson said it will also benefit civilian patients.

Charges for the same medical procedures can vary by  thousands of dollars at hospitals across the country — and at the two  cross-town rivals in the Roanoke Valley, according to data released  Wednesday by the federal government.

At LewisGale Medical Center in Salem, the list price  for nearly all of the treatments included in the data was higher than  what was charged by Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

For example, the average cost for a joint replacement at LewisGale was $64,505, compared with  $53,441 at Roanoke Memorial.

In fact, Roanoke Memorial was less expensive for all but two of 95 procedures included in the data.

Released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and  Medicaid Services, the figures were touted as the first opportunity for  health care consumers to make a hospital-to-hospital comparison.

To read the rest of this story, click here.

To go directly to the data on prices, click here. A note: This is raw data, and lots of it — a listing of hundreds of hospitals, arranged in alphabetical order by state. To search for a particular hospital, enter its name in the search box in the upper right corner, where the words “find in this dataset” appear.  That will take you to a list of up to 100 procedures performed at the hospital, which appear in the column labeled “DRG definition.”  Scroll to the right to find the list price for the services, which is labeled “ average covered charge.” The next column to the right, labeled “average total payment” is what Medicare actually paid to the hospital.

For the first time since 2007, Carilion Clinic turned a profit in the most recently completed fiscal year.

The Roanoke-based health care organization saw  operating income of $13.4 million in the 2012 fiscal year, which ended  Sept. 30, according to its latest audited financial report.

In the previous fiscal year, Carilion lost $6.2 million.

The return to profitability comes as Carilion slowly  emerges from the recession’s effects on health care, which coincided  with an earlier-formed plan to pump millions into a new clinic model and  other capital expenses.

As the region’s largest private employer, Carilion  did not significantly cut back on employment or health care services  during the lean years since 2007, a period in which its net assets  declined dramatically.

In fact, it did the opposite, and officials hope the  new clinic model and other growth initiatives will pave the way for  more years in the black.

“We’re pleased with the success we’ve had in  executing our plan and returning to profitability,” said Don Halliwill,  Carilion’s chief financial officer.

To read the rest of this story, click here.

A patent was recently issued for the design of an online tool developed by Attention Point, a Roanoke-based company that helps doctors better evaluate children suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Patent no. 8,340,752 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was the third and likely final patent associated with the production of  DefiniPoint, an online assessment tool that assists with the diagnosis of ADHD.

The traditional process is heavily paper-based, requiring parents and teachers to fill out assessment forms.

DefiniPoint features an algorithm that reads the results of the assessments and yields a single score. The product was launched last year.

“While the technology underneath DefiniPoint is not obvious, the benefits of integrating multiple pieces of medical data are certainly clear,” said Sam English, founder and CEO of Attention Point.

Co-inventors of the product are Daniel Cox, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Behavioral Medicine Research, UVa professors Kim Penberthy and Boris Kovatchev, and Sweet Briar professor Raina Robeva, according to a news release from Attention Point.

With a $150,000 gift, two nursing labs within Virginia Western Community College’s new Center for Science and Health Profession building will be named after Friendship Retirement Community.

The naming rights are the first to be granted for the $26 million building currently being constructed on the Roanoke campus. In this case, the nursing and simulation labs for the college’s registered nursing program will bear Friendship’s name.

“The nursing vocation is such an integral part of the health and rehabilitation of our senior population and the greater community that investing in a training program in the Roanoke Valley that will attract educated and compassionate individuals is in keeping with our mission to attract and retain the best healthcare professionals possible,” said Friendship CEO and President Russ Barksdale in an email. “It is also critical as an employer and a member of this community to have continuing education opportunities in the nursing field.”

Virginia Western is working to secure donations for other naming rights within the new building, said spokesman Josh Meyer. The money is handled through the college’s educational foundation and is used at the discretion of the board, he added, adding that how the Friendship gift will be spent has not yet been determined. Read more »

Sam English has a sales pitch.

“Nearly 10 percent of school children or 6 million kids are diagnosed with ADHD,” he said. “It’s a lot of people… And the diagnosis rate is increasing annually.”

Each year about 2.5 million people are assessed for ADHD, he said. His pitch is to the doctors doing those assessments.

Through his Roanoke-based company Attention Point, English is selling an online tool called DefiniPoint that is aimed at improving the clinical diagnostic process for Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Read more »

Medicare made a mistake.

In calculating the fines hospitals must pay for having too many patients readmitted within 30 days of being discharged, the government used some old data, according to NPR and Kaiser Health News.

It means that hospitals run by LewisGale Regional Health System and Carilion Clinic, are subject to slightly higher penalties, than what I previously shared on this blog.

“The changes were tiny, averaging two-hundreds of a percent of a hospital’s regular Medicare reimbursements,” Kaiser reported.

See a list of penalties by hospital all of the penalties here.

LewisGale Regional Health System has added a chief medical officer to its senior leadership in an effort to focus on quality and patient safety issues.

LewisGale announced Tuesday that it has hired a physician from Florida to fill the new role. Dr. Gary Winfield, 55, previously worked for LewisGale’s parent company, HCA Inc., in several roles. Most recently, he was acting division chief medical officer for HCA’s South Atlantic division.

Previously, the Salem-based system did not have a marketwide chief medical officer overseeing patient care standards at its four hospitals in Southwest Virginia. Instead, LewisGale relied on medical directors and medical executive committees at each of the hospitals to oversee physician staff and issues related to patient safety and quality, spokeswoman Nancy May said.

The move is in line with LewisGale’s efforts to integrate the four hospitals into one system, she said.

Photo by The Roanoke Times

The Virginia Department of Health has leased space at Valley View Mall to establish a wellness center aimed at supporting the Women, Infants and Children program.

The state signed a lease in July for $4,650 a month, according to a copy of the lease. The rent includes all utilities.

The lease runs until Jan. 31 and the center’s hours have been set from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The lease allows for the health department to extend the hours, if needed, as long as the center’s hours remain within the normal operating hours for the Roanoke mall.

In addition to supporting the health department’s nutritional program for low-income families, the area is intended to support immunization clinics and health education outreach.

Read more about the program on the Storefront blog and in Sunday’s Retail Roundup column.

MedExpress Urgent Care will open the doors on its Roanoke location today.

The West Virginia-based MedExpress has been part of an urgent care boom for the region as the company has quickly opened locations throughout the state, including clinics in Salem and Christiansburg.The newest center is at 4092 Electric Road. Read more »